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THE NATIONAL CRISIS 


BEING AN ADDRESS, 


Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Dartmouth College, at 

Hanover, N. H., 

«JLily 30tlA 7 1862. 


BY 

GEORGE L. PRENTISS, DJD. 



PUBLISHED IN THE OCTOBER NUMBER OF 


®lu gtmmrait ® luatogifiU 


NEW-YORK : 

PUBLISHED BY W. IT. BIB WELL, 
No. 5 Beekman Street. 


1 8 6 2 . 








.3 

. 1 ** 


ithcolo^ical 



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v 


iicumu. 


No. XIII. 

CONTENTS OF THE JANUARY NUMBER, 1862. 


A PORTRAIT OF THE REV. GARDINER SPRING, D.D. 


I. Essays and Reviews. 

Article I.—The Theological System of Emmons,.7 

II. —The Ante-Nicene Trinitarianism. By Prof. R. D. Hitchcock, D.D., 54 

III. —Memorial of the American Board. By Dr. Worcester, * - 82 

IV. —The Two Schools of Philosophy. By Tayler Lewis, LL.D., - 102 

V. —Gardiner Spring. D.D., and the Brick Church, N. Y., - - - 135 

VI. —The Beauty of Holiness,. 142 


II. Theological and Literary Intelligence. 

Codex Sinaiticus —Discoveries in Asia Minor—Jewish Literature. Germany : Luther's 
Monument — Jahrbiicher f. deutsche Theologie— Deutsche Vierteljahrsschnft — 
other German theological quarterlies — Dellinger — Biographical Works, etc. Hol¬ 
land : The Four Theological Parties — Scholten, etc. France: Lacordaire — 

Migne’s Collections —Revue Chretienne—Annalcs de Philosophic Chretienne —New 
Works—Paris Press. Italy : Passaglia—New Manuscripts—Mazzini—Nicolini— 

Michel Angelo, etc. Greece : Common Schools—Mixed Marriages—Bishops and 
Bibles. England : Journal of Sacred Literature—British and Foreign Evangelical 
Review — Other Reviews—Wesleyan Literature—New Works, etc. Scotland: 
Stewart’s New System — Douglas of Cavers, etc. United States: North American 
and other Reviews—New Works—Oriental Society—Danville Quarterly, - - 157 

III. Literary and Critical Notices of Books. 

Biblical Literature: Macdonald’s Pentateuch — Lange’s Matthew Translated — 
Trench’s Seven Churches in Asia—Ellicott’a Life of Christ—Hopkins’s Spots on the 
Sun — The Book of Psalms. Theology:. JKeerl, Der Mensch, das Ebenbild Gottes 
—Reville, Essais de Critique Religieuse —Tracts for Priests and People—Hudson’s 
)ebt and Grace—Walker’s Sermons—Huntington’s Year of Church Work—But- 
ier’s Theology—Stewart’s Free-Will Baptists—Ball on Baptism. The Church and 
its History: Frederick William IV on Church Government—Dorner’s Person of 
Christ—Chrystal’s Baptism—Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines—Gieseler’s Church 
History — History and Biography: Hopkins’s Puritans — May’s Constitutional 
History of England—Schmidt’s Melanchthon—Uhlborn’s Urbanus Rhegius—Memoirs 
of Prof. Bush—Baehring and Gelzer on Bunsen. Books of Travel : Andersson’s 
Okavango River—Last Travels of Tda Pfeiffer. General Literature: Marsh on 
the English Language—Zengler, Bibliotheca Orientals—Works of Lord Byron— 
Titcomb’s Lessons in Life — Davidson’s Elijah — The Partisan Leader — Reade’s 
Cloister and Hearth—Brooks, The Silver Cord—Wills, Notice to Quit—Streaks ot 
Light—Eclectic Magazine—Harper’s Magazine. Political and Civil Questions : 

Rice, Our Country, and the Church — Dali, Woman’s Rights — Lord on National 
Currency—Ellison’s Slavery in the United States — Addresses and Discourses by 
Prentiss, Hitchcock, Henry, Walker, Dunning, and Magie, - - - - 174 

IV. Statistics, and Church News. 

Population of the Globe—Cost of War—European Cities—The Evangelical Alliance. 

United States : American Board -Statistics of Presbyterian and German Reform¬ 
ed Churches—Southern Presbyterians—Synod of New York and New Jersey on 

the War Canada : Census—Newfoundland—Nova Scotia. England : Census_ 

Popular Education—Contributions—Church-Rate Bill—Increase of Bishopries_ 

Congregationalism. Scotland : Free Church. Ireland : Census. France : Pub¬ 
lic Worship — Education — Protestant Churches. Spain: Census—Education. 

Italy: St. Peter’s Pence — Statistics of Rome — Convents in Perugia. Asia : 
Protestantism in Siam, ... . 132 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


BY EEV. GEORGE L. PRENTISS, D.D. 


TnE fine saying of the poet Schiller, Die Welt-geschiehte ist 
das Welt-gericht ) is receiving impressive illustration in our 
day. Rarely have events been fraught with such solemn, 
judicial import. There has been nothing like it since the 
great wars of the French Revolution. For a generation after 
that epoch of storm and battle, the course of events was so 
quiet as to lead many to believe that the reign of universal 
peace was, just at hand. Under the impulse of this cheering 
belief, vast schemes for the improvement of society were in¬ 
augurated. The schoolmaster everywhere went abroad. The 
maxim of Lord Bacon, Knowledge is Power , struck men’s minds 
with the force of a new revelation. It became in the practical 
sphere what the Inductive Method, so highly praised and so 
poorly exemplified by the same illustrious thinker, had already 
become in the sphere of natural philosophy. Public opinion 
was enthroned as the ruling power in the world. The prin¬ 
ciple of free association was applied to the working out of 
ethical and political reforms as never before. It was applied, 

* The following Article was delivered as an address before the Phi Beta Kappa 
Society in Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., July 30, 1862. I have consented 
to its publication here at the request of the Editor, yet with a good deal of reluc¬ 
tance ; for the form of a popular address seems to me hardly suited to the grave and 
dispassionate character of a Theological Review. Some passages relating to British 
sympathy with America are omitted, that subject having been already so fully dis¬ 
cussed in the July Number of this Review. G. L. P. 


IN EXCHANGE 

12 O’rvt 




2 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


also, with still more zeal and confidence to the work of dif¬ 
fusing Christian truth among all nations. Literature, art, 
poetry, and science, inspired by the popular idea, willingly 
joined their forces to those of philanthropy, politics, and reli¬ 
gion. And while all this was going on in the moral world, 
the beneficent Genius of Invention w r as busy in taming the 
wildest agencies of nature and harnessing them “ in order 
serviceable” to the triumphal car of Progress. The steam¬ 
boat, the railroad, the steam - press, and the magnetic tele¬ 
graph were summoned into being, and incorporated with 
our modern civilisation. Is it strange that Christian society, 
animated by such generous intentions, and thus armed of a 
sudden with powers almost miraculous for realizing them, 
should have fancied itself on the very verge of that Promised 
Land toward which it had been wandering through so many 
wearisome centuries? Is it a wonder that the man of faith 
and the man of science vied with each other in depicting the 
glories of the new era? We, whose entrance into intellectual 
life -was in those days, are not likely to forget what a fair bow 
of promise seemed to rest upon the future. If there was less of 
that unbounded hope which intoxicated youthful minds at the 
close of the last century, there was also far less of the over¬ 
weening conceit which brought upon that generation such fear¬ 
ful disasters. Never before, within the same period, were such 
varied and strenuous exertions put forth to diffuse useful know¬ 
ledge, to elevate and educate the masses, to ameliorate the 
condition of the indigent, neglected, and unfortunate classes, 
to reform the vicious, to train up children in right paths, to 
popularize the highest truths of science and religion, to eman¬ 
cipate and dignify labor, to multiply the conveniences and 
comforts of life, to do away with slavery, war, intemperance, 
and the other giant evils which had so long preyed upon human 
happiness—in a word, to render the world the abode of indus¬ 
trious freedom, peace, domestic joy, and virtuous intelligence. 
If you will take the trouble to read over addresses delivered 
thirty or forty years ago on occasions like the present, you 
will find them replete with sentiments illustrative of what I 
I ave been saying. 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


8 


The impression, however, that the world was drawing near 
to the reign of general peace and brotherhood was far from 
universal. Some of the best and ablest thinkers maintained 
quite the contrary theory. They contended that the old provi¬ 
dential laws were still in full operation ; that the old passions 
of human nature, however for a time they might appear to 
sleep, were in reality as strong and explosive as ever; that 
instead of allaying them, the very advancement of society 
was fitted rather to give them new stimulus, and to arm them 
with more destructive "weapons; that in a word, the signs of 
the times foretokened anything but millennial days. Expe¬ 
rience has certainly justified this rather than the other view. 
We can now see plainly enough, that the age which at Water¬ 
loo seemed to be bidding adieu to the sword, was itself preg¬ 
nant with the elements of titanic strife. The revolutionary 
storms which swept over Europe in 1848, revealed this to 
every observing eye, and subsequent events have only render¬ 
ed it still clearer. The Eastern war, the Indian revolt, the 
wars in China, the Italian struggle, and now our own civil war, 
have demonstrated, one after the other, that the occupation of 
the peace society is for the present gone, and that a long time 
must elapse before spears will be turned into pruning-hooks. 
So far from learning war no more, never did the nations study 
it with greater diligence, never were preparations for it made 
on a more colossal scale than now. Europe is one huge camp, 
and reverberates with the tramp of a million of armed men. 

History is, indeed, a wonderful teacher and judge. Those 
great crises, especially, which notch the centuries, speak with 
a voice which is as the voice of many waters, and as the voice 
of mighty thunderings. What a touchstone they are of good 
and evil! How plainly they tell us what was right and what 
was wrong in the past! How they vindicate the majesty of 
truth! How they uncloak false theories and put to silence 
the ignorance of foolish men ! They are the Apocalypse of 
Providence. What was said of the Sibyl, might be applied 
to them: 


4 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


Not hers 

To win the sense by words of rhetoric, 

Lip-blossoms, breathing perishable sweets; 

But by the power of the informing Word 
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years, 

Her deep, prophetic bodements. 

Our country is now passing through one of these momentous 
crises of history. It fell upon us like a thunderbolt from a 
clear sky. For some eighteen months it has absorbed the at¬ 
tention and tasked the chief energies of the nation. We have 
thought and talked about little else. Nor has it affected us 
alone. It has startled all Europe and the furthest Orient, 
The whole civilised world has watched its course with eager 
and profound solicitude. Those who differ heaven-wide as to 
its real character, confess it to be one of the most remarkable 
and portentous in the records of the race. On this point the 
same opinion has prevailed at Charleston and Richmond as at 
New York and Boston; at London, Paris, and St. Petersburg 
as at Washington. Nobody seems disposed to underrate its 
importance. It is everywhere felt to be not merely an Ame¬ 
rican question, but for the time being, at least, the paramount 
question of the world. The Eastern question, the Roman 
question, the Italian question, and all other questions, appear 
insignificant in comparison with the awful drama which Al¬ 
mighty Providence is now enacting in these United States. 
Here, if anywhere in the realm of time and space—I think we 
may say it without presumption — here, if anywhere, is the 
spot upon which the eyes of all who regard with interest the 
fortunes of the human race, whether among mortals or the im¬ 
mortals, are most intently fixed. You will not deem it strange, 
therefore, that I propose to speak to you of this portentous 
crisis, and to elicit, if possible, a portion of its meaning. I 
confess I should feel guilty of a kind of disloyalty, were I to 
occupy your attention with any other topic. 

But two forms of speech seem to me pertinent now. The 
first is prayer to God. The second is, wise, faithful, patri¬ 
otic speech to each other. We cannot, certainly, invoke too fre¬ 
quently or too fervently the favor of that Infinite Power which 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


5 


rules the world, and before which all the nations of the earth 
are as nothing; nor can we speak to each other with too much 
earnestness of the solemn work in which we are engaged. But 
aside from these two things, why should a loyal American citi¬ 
zen stop to utter or to hear words, be they never so eloquent ? 
What are the tongues of men and of angels at such an hour as 
this, if they are not flaming with patriotic ardor; if they do 
not help on the work of saving the nation ? The mission of 
the scholar to-day, is to offer all his knowledge, and all his 
eloquence, and all his talents, and his own life also, if need be, 
upon the altar of that country to which he owes so much. 

I make no apology, then, for my subject, for it is the only 
one on which I can speak to you. But I shall aim to treat it in 
a temper not unbefitting this occasion. I shall try to do so in 
a spirit harmonizing with its high and weighty character. The 
feelings of Moses, when the angel of the Lord appeared unto 
him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he said, 
I will now turn aside , and see this great sight , why the bush 
is not burnt , would not, perhaps, misbecome us to-day, as, 
standing on this literary Horeb, we look forth upon our im¬ 
perial Republic, and marvel that it is still unconsumed amidst 
the fiery trials which have so long encompassed it. Could 
that unseen voice, which issued from the midst of the burn¬ 
ing bush, interpret to us the strange and fearful scene upon 
which we are gazing, it would, I doubt not, say to us as it said 
to Moses: Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the jplace 
whereon thou standest is holy ground . He who considers 
this terrible scene without a feeling of religious awe, is not 
wrong in his temper merely ; he. is utterly wrong in his method; 
his understanding is off the track. For it is not a whit more 
certain that we are in the midst of a tremendous strait, 
than it is certain that we have been brought into it by 
the hand of God. We have not fallen into it, nor run 
into it, nor been driven into it by chance, or by any mere 
human impulse. The storm that has swept over the nation 
and set all the waves and the sea roaring, was raised by no 
enchanter’s wand. It has been slowly gathering for more 


6 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


than a third of a century; and it has at length burst upon us 
so furiously in strict accordance with the moral laws and or¬ 
der of the world. There is divine reason in it. There is di¬ 
vine justice in it. And we may be quite sure there is a divine 
purpose in it. It is little better than moral idiocy to attempt 
to explain this trouble upon any lower principles. 

The hand of God, it is true, is always in the world, and noth¬ 
ing comes to pass independently of him. But how much 
more distinctly and powerfully his ruling hand is manifested 
at some times than at others! There are periods when every¬ 
thing seems to go on according to mere natural law. The 
visible course of affairs is like clock - work. It requires no 
little effort to believe that behind these quiet, customary ap¬ 
pearances Almighty Wisdom is concealed, and that through 
them all it is executing its steadfast decrees. Such are the 
times of peace and outward prosperity. Then come periods 
when the old order of things is brought to an end. Hew and 
extraordinary forces suddenly spring into action. Other men 
and other principles gain the ascendency. Hew measures are 
adopted. A social, a religious, a political revolution is inau¬ 
gurated. There is a fierce struggle between hostile opinions 
and systems ; between the past and the future. There is civil 
convulsion. There is the battle of the warrior, with confused 
noise and garments rolled in blood. Such are the times of 
transition, of war and public calamity. The whole order of 
the world seems then to be changing. A new cycle of events 
begins. A fresh chapter is opened in history. Humanity 
takes a step never taken before toward the fulfilment of its 
grand destiny. The hand on the dial-plate of time is moved 
forward, and no mortal power is strong enough ever to put it 
back again. The introduction of Christianity, the inundation 
and conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbaric hordes of 
the Horth, the Protestant Reformation, the civil wars of Eng¬ 
land, the American and French Revolutions, afford some of 
the most memorable instances of these great crises and turn¬ 
ing-points in the march of society. At such times that stu¬ 
pendous agency, which we call Providence, comes out into the 
foreground, as it were, and rivets the astonished gaze of all 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


7 


thoughtful and devout beholders. Then the eye that is armed 
with faith can almost see it, as it moves to and fro and directs 
the course of events, like a skilful general leading his forces to 
victory. Then the ear, that is armed with faith, can almost 
hear it as, uttering its voice above the tumult and roar of bat¬ 
tle, it instructs the warring elements how to fight. And what 
at the moment may appear obscure and contradictory, how 
plain it is when we come to read it in the light of the finished 
series of events! The working out of a great Providential 
issue is, in this respect, not unlike a child’s puzzle. The result 
is predetermined, and each several piece has an appointed place 
in securing it. The wrong position of a single piece would 
defeat the whole plan ; and yet, to one who had never before 
watched the game, many a piece would seem more helpful 
in a wrong than in the right position. But the practised lit¬ 
tle eye, that sees the end from the beginning, knows better. 
So particular movements of the Divine hand, in compassing a 
certain object, appear to us at times strange and disastrous; 
but they are not so in reality. The strategy of Providence is 
almost always unexpected, because it is so far-reaching and 
comprehensive; but it never fails. Every step leads in the 
best, if not always in the shortest way to final success. When 
the last step is taken ; when the last piece is in its place—the 
divine puzzle is solved, and we feel assured that it could not 
have been worked out so well in any other way. Great and 
marvellous are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty. 

Eeason and religion, then, alike impel us to acknowledge 
reverently the hand of God in this crisis. Nothing else can 
raise us to the height of its great meaning, or arm us with 
the strength and courage to go through it in triumph. Noth¬ 
ing else can save us from being utterly maddened by the 
crimes, horrors, and suffering, which mark its course. If 
he does not believe it has a divine side; that it is under 
the direction of Eternal Providence, and intended to work 
out His omnipotent and all-wise decrees, I do not see how 
any thoughtful man can look upon it without shame and 
despair. If God is not in it, then is it assuredly the devil’s 
work, and “ chaos is come again.” 


8 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


But it is not enough to contemplate this national tragedy with 
an awestruck eye, or to believe that it is pervaded by a divine 
purpose. It exceedingly concerns us to find out what that di¬ 
vine purpose really is. Thrice is he armed who hath his 
quarrel just; and thrice again is he armed who comprehends 
the justice of his quarrel. It is no Deus ex machina who has 
ordained this conflict; hut the ever-living God of nature and 
of history. He still governs the world as he has always gov¬ 
erned it, by righteous and beneficent laws. As he upholdeth, 
so doth he rule all things by the word of his power. Events 
march in the train and keep step to the music of that divine 
Logos , which was, and is, and is to come. In order to act the 
right part in them, and in order to understand them when 
they have come to pass, our own intelligence must be in 
vital sympathy with that of their invisible Author and Ar¬ 
biter. The divine purpose which is forcing its way into ex¬ 
istence, and preparing for itself a local habitation and a name 
on earth, must be reproduced in our own consciousness, and 
embodied in our own life. This is the only way for men 
to become co-workers with the Most High in executing his 
sovereign behests. This is the ancient method by which, 
from age to age, mighty nations and all the elect spirits of 
the race have comprehended their Heaven-appointed mission 
—fulfilled their several tasks, and rendered themselves forever 
illustrious in human annals. This is the secret of that sacred en¬ 
thusiasm, which transformed Eastern shepherds and nomads of 
the desert into venerable patriarchs, seers, warriors, and kings; 
which changed fishermen into apostles and evangelists, and 
which is able still to bless the world with heroes, saints, and 
martyrs. It is the presence of some divine idea in the soul, act¬ 
uating the whole being and illuminating the path of life. Let a 
man grasp, in honest conviction, a real thought of God, and 
spend his days in striving to realize it; and he is on the highway 
to glory, honor, and immortality. Let a whole people grasp, in 
honest conviction, some sacred cause, some principle of im¬ 
mutable justice, and consecrate itself to the work of vindicat¬ 
ing that cause and enthroning that principle, and we have the 
grandest spectacle ever witnessed on earth. 

One design of public trials is, no doubt, to render such con- 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


9 


secration purer and more entire. There is no sweeter or no¬ 
bler use of adversity than this. It is astonishing what rapid 
strides a people can make in understanding the principles of 
its own existence, its history, and its providential task under 
the pressure of overwhelming calamity. How immeasurably 
more vivid and profound is our national consciousness than it 
was before the bombardment of Fort Sumter! You remem¬ 
ber how the report of that flagitious act was borne to us on the 
wings of the lightning; and liow T , like lightning, it struck our 
hearts. But it did more than that; it penetrated the lowest 
depths of the popular mind like the trump of God, and raised 
again to newness of life old ancestral ideas and patriotic in¬ 
stincts, which had too long lain buried in oblivion. Years 
seemed to intervene between the day before and the day after 
we heard that appalling news. And we have lived very fast 
ever since. If you measure time by events, we have lived al¬ 
most half a century since then. If you measure time by the 
intensity and depth of experience which is acquired in it, the 
nation has passed since then from incredulous youth to full and 
earnest manhood. It has felt the weight of tremendous cares 
and responsibilities ; it has been at its wits’ end and staggered 
like a drunken man ; it has been rocked as by an earthquake, 
has poured out its blood like water, and walked month after 
month along the edge of a bottomless pit that yawned to swal¬ 
low it up. It has been putting forth superhuman exertions to 
save its own life, its honor, and all its dearest treasures. Sure¬ 
ly it ought to have learnt thus a great deal of wisdom ; surely 
it ought to understand both itself and others a great deal bet¬ 
ter than it did eighteen months ago. 

And beyond all question, such has been the effect of its 
fearful experience. This crisis, like the word of God, has been 
quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, 
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and 
of the joints and marrow; and has been a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the nation’s heart. It has revealed to 
us perils of whose existence we had not dreamed, but which, 
concealed a little longer, would have wrecked us past hope. 
It has taught us great lessons of political truth and duty,— 


10 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct, 


lessons concerning the divine institution, authority, benefi¬ 
cence, and rightful claims of government, which, if we mark, 
learn, and inwardly digest them, will not be forgotten for a 
thousand years. It has shown us that the principles for which 
our fathers fought,' and toiled, for which they lived and died— 
the principles which lie at the foundation, uphold and ani¬ 
mate the whole majestic structure, and form the cap-stone of 
our Christian Kepublic, are as sacred as they are glorious; 
that they are guarded by a jealous deity, whose feet are 
indeed shod with wool, but his path is as the path of a flam¬ 
ing sword, turning every way; and that no people can trample 
these principles under foot without incurring his vengeance. 
How many huge fallacies, by which we have been led to 
fancy we could enjoy the inestimable rights and privileges 
without fulfilling the self-sacrificing duties of constitutional 
liberty, has this crisis scattered to the winds! How it has, at 
once, revealed and chastised our national vices and follies, our 
vain-glorious conceit, our political corruption and venality, 
our shallow views of public duty, the madness of blind party¬ 
feeling, and the bitter consequences of converting the service 
and offices of the country into a barbarous system of partisan 
reward and spoils ! How plainly we now see that mere ma¬ 
terial prosperity and aggrandisement are no true signs of na¬ 
tional well-being; that the most magnificent industrial inter¬ 
est, if allied to injustice and despotic lust of power, may in an 
instant lose its sceptre and become like a millstone about the 
neck of its subjects to drown them in the depths of anarchy 
and woe. 

It is easy to perceive how in these and similar ways, this re¬ 
bellion, by its very magnitude and wickedness, has been to us 
an incomparable moral and political discipline. It has wrought 
upon the understanding, conscience, and whole spirit of the 
nation with an almost miraculous power. It has precipitated 
a work of popular education, to which there are few, if any, 
parallels in history. As we compare the temper and posture 
of the national mind in reference to some of the weightiest 
problems of the nation’s life with what it was only eighteen 
months ago, we are lost in wonder. It is like comparing the 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


11 


intelligence and courage of consummate manhood with the 
petty views and weakness of youth. Momentous questions 
which then perplexed the brains of statesmen, as they had 
long been the subject of fierce debate throughout the land, 
have been finally answered, and their answers wrought into 
the inmost experience, sense, and character of the nation. 
They are adjudged and settled for all time. It is scarcely 
more probable that they will be reopened than that we shall 
revive the question, decided by our fathers a century ago, of 
colonial allegiance to the crown of Great Britain. 

Secession is one of these adjudicated questions. This crisis 
has compelled the American people to answer it, and they have 
done so by stamping it with the seal of their abhorrence as 
deadly heresy and rebellion. They have marked it with an 
anathema such as the Christian Church has put upon an open 
denial of God. It is like atheism, and subverts the first princi¬ 
ples of our political worship as a free, order-loving, and covenant¬ 
keeping people. It makes the Constitution, as atheism makes 
the Bible, a deceitful dead letter, instead of an organic law 
of life. It makes the government, which our fathers built 
up for us with such infinite pains, a mockery and a delusion, 
placing in its hand a broken reed instead of the mighty 
sceptre of righteous and sovereign authority. It ruthlessly 
puts asunder that Union and Liberty which Almighty Provi¬ 
dence, on the day when they so happily joined hands in the 
presence of the jubilant nation, surely intended should be one 
and inseparable, then and for ever. It is a principle of social 
disintegration and universal anarchy. Denying that we] are, 
or ever were, the people of these United States, it aims to 
destroy our historic life, to blot out our name and nation, and 
render ns a by-word in the earth. Secession, in fine, is na¬ 
tional suicide. It is a monstrous political crime, which must be 
put down and punished at all hazards and at any cost. Such 
is the irrevocable judgment which the American people have 
passed upon this baleful doctrine. 

And in passing this sentence, I need hardly say, they have 
settled the question of coercion also. They have decided that 
it is both their right and bounden duty to maintain their na * 


12 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


tional existence and authority by force of arms. They were 
very slow in coming to this conclusion ; it cost them prodigious 
struggles of mind; they w T ould have given everything short of 
their country’s life and honor to avoid the issue. Where does 
history afford another instance of a puissant and high-spirited 
nation drawing the sword and wielding it in its own self-defence 
with such unspeakable reluctance % But the nation has deliber¬ 
ately taken this step, and in doing so has determined that this 
Union, since it could no longer be preserved by the ballot, must 
be preserved by the bullet; that those who, against reason, 
against law, and against solemn oaths, attempt to destroy it, 
shall be compelled to desist and return to their allegiance by 
rifled cannon and the sword of justice. And it has already 
sealed this decision with the blood of myriads of its noblest 
sons. Henceforth let all the world understand that American 
Democracy is not the rule of popular opinion or of moral and 
political suasion only,—not mere organised influence, but that 
it is government in the highest sense of the term; and that 
the enforcement of the laws, at whatever cost, is a fundament¬ 
al article of its creed—just as fundamental as liberty itself. 

But there is another and still more momentous question which 
this rebellion, if it has "not already answered, is rapidly forcing 
to a settlement. It is one of the most formidable questions 
that ever taxed a nation’s intelligence or puzzled a nation’s 
will. It relates to the most extraordinary political and so¬ 
cial phenomenon of modern times. For more than a cen¬ 
tury it has been the subject of earnest thought and discus¬ 
sion ; for a third of a century it has called forth more de¬ 
bate, has aroused more vehement passions, and led to sharper 
diversities of opinion, than any other subject. It has created 
a literature of its own; and if all the articles, speeches, ad¬ 
dresses, sermons, reviews, pamphlets, and books which have 
been written upon it were collected, they would form a large 
library ; and they would furnish too, I may add, as striking 
specimens of human eloquence, and of both the power and 
weakness of human wisdom, as can be found in our mother- 
tongue. There is no other chapter in history exactly like 
this, and certainly few others so profoundly interesting to the 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


18 


student of human nature. African slavery in the bosom of 
this free , democratic , Christian Republic —whence and what 
is it ? right or wrong ? a blessing to be spread and perpetu¬ 
ated ; a curse to be got rid of, or a tertium quid , capable of 
being turned into a blessing or a curse, according to the use 
that is made of it ? Is it a sectional or a national institution, 
the creature of mere local and municipal law, or of the Con¬ 
stitution itself? Ought the Christian Church to condemn or 
to defend it, or to say nothing about it ? Have negroes 
rights which the government and white men are bound to 
respect, or does their rightful state lie outside the sphere of 
law, the Constitution, and the public conscience ? Behold a 
sample of the points involved in the problem of American 
slavery! 

I need not stop to review the history of this terrible ques¬ 
tion. You know it as well as I do. You know how the dif¬ 
ferences of opinion about it became more and more sharply 
defined, more antagonistic and irreconcilable both in church 
and state, until they reached their climax and practical con¬ 
clusion in the rupture, one after another, of large religious 
denominations, in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and 
the consequent struggle in Kansas, in the Dred Scott decision, 
and the Presidential election of 1860. By this time the South 
had become almost unanimous in regarding slavery as a divine 
institution ; and as such they, naturally enough, claimed the 
right to extend it far and near. Few vestiges remained of the 
anti-slavery sentiments which formerly prevailed among them, 
and had been cherished by their most illustrious statesmen of 
earlier days. It was one of the most sudden and complete 
revolutions of public opinion on record. To explain fully how 
it was brought • about, would lead me astray from my subject. 
The prodigious growth of the cotton interest was a leading 
cause, but by no means the only one. Along with this con¬ 
spired potent influences, moral, social, and speculative, which 
were in part the natural effect of slavery itself, and in part 
wrought upon the Southern mind from abroad, and especially 
from the North. The result was, a public opinion in favor of 
the institution so unanimous and despotic, that the slightest 


14 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


whisper of opposition imperilled a man’s reputation, if not his 
life. The decree of King Nebuchadnezzar, that whoso would 
not fall down and worship the golden image which he had set 
up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, should 
be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace, was scarcely 
more inexorable than the public sentiment at the South, which 
demanded homage to the Dagon of slavery. 

In the Free States, meanwhile, hostility to the system had 
grown deeper and more intense; but it was still far from 
unanimous. A large and influential portion of the Northern 
people, and leaders of opinion, either kept silent on the subject 
or spoke with doubtful and bated breath ; others boldly avowed 
their entire sympathy with the Southern doctrine ; denounced 
all who opposed it, and predicted the day when that doc¬ 
trine would be dominant throughout the nation. Most of this 
latter class were wont to spell “ negro” with two gs, and could 
not restrain their wonder that such a black and miserable 
creature of God should excite anybody’s thought or pity. 
Certain ethnological theories of the day, and such contempt¬ 
uous views as Mr. Carlyle, in one of his Latter-Day Pamphlets, 
allowed himself to express respecting Sambo and the uses to 
which he should be put in the world, gave great aid and com¬ 
fort to this class at the North, as they had done to the new 
doctrine at the South. Then there were inveterate party pre¬ 
judices, dislike of politics in the pulpit, and I kno^y not what 
other influences, which continued to excite bitter divisions in 
Northern sentiment. Some who really hated slavery, hated 
abolitionism a great deal more; while many hated abolition¬ 
ism with such total energy of mind and heart that no faculty 
was left for hating slavery. The state of things was curious in 
the extreme. It was a psychological study. Thousands of 
candid and sensible men look back to their feelings on the sub¬ 
ject two years ago with unfeigned astonishment; and thousands 
more are likely to do so before another two years shall have 
passed away. The odium tlieologicum in the palmiest days of 
bigotry and superstition was scarcely more suspicious or more 
intolerant than the sentiment aroused in many a Northern 
good man’s bosom by the mildest denunciation of slavery as a 
wicked and cruel system. 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


15 


Such is a rude but not, I think, an unfair picture of the state of 
popular opinion in reference to slavery two years ago. Though 
far in advance of what it had been before in our day, it was 
yet conflicting and deeply complicated with the violent pas¬ 
sions and prejudices of party. 

But the summer of 1860 seems to lie far back in a former 
age. The nation, as I have said, is several decennia older than 
it was then. It has been taking lessons of a Higher Teacher. 
It has passed through “ great searchings of heart.” Its moral 
vision has been touched with a marvellous eye-salve, and where¬ 
as it w r as once blind, now it sees—sees with the clearness of in¬ 
tuition—sees with amazement that it never saw before—sees 
as it w T ere in the very light of eternal justice. An earthquake 
has broken asunder the gates of brass wherein the public con¬ 
science long seemed to lie imprisoned, and that conscience has 
come forth, disenthralled, to bear witness to the truth, and to 
judge righteous judgment. Slavery appears to the nation 
now what his sin—his intemperance, his gambling, his lust— 
appears to the man whose feet have at last been taken from 
the horrible pit and the miry clay and planted upon a rock. 
We have found out that each one of its sable victims is like a 
grain of gunpowder; and that four millions of them combined 
together in the political and social system render that system 
one vast magazine of mischief, sure sooner or later to explode 
and scatter ruin over the world. The logic of words had done 
its work; and thousands of wise and good men remained still 
unconvinced. The logic of events and of Providence has now 
been heard thundering through the land ; and the people are 
beginning to cry out, Amen—so let it be l 

Of course there are individual exceptions. Some still assert 
that abolitionism, political ambition, the doctrine of State- 
rights, or something else, and not slavery, is the prime cause 
of this rebellion. But such theories are fast dying out; few 
real thinkers advocate them any more. The plain common- 
sense of the American people agrees with the philosophy of 
history, with the best reflection and with the most authoritative 
testimony of Southern leaders themselves (of such men as Dr. 
Thornwell and Yice-President Stephens, e. g.) in regarding 


16 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct, 


Slavery as the proper root and ground of our national troubles. 
A strong disunion sentiment, it is true, had long existed at the 
South, and the desire to break up the Union has often used 
slavery for a pretext, as General Jackson, with rare sagacity, 
predicted it would. dSTo doubt wild dreams of a Southern re¬ 
public, of conquest in Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and 
elsewhere, coupled with bitter disappointment at the loss of 
political power at home and a growing dislike of “Yankees and 
Northern mudsills”, have been controlling motives in precipi¬ 
tating treason. But back of all these other motives—animat : 
ing, envenoming and arming them all — has lain the slave- 
power itself. Out of this dark and evil ground was born the 
dire spirit of Secession. Had no such institution existed, I do 
not deny that centrifugal tendencies might have shown them¬ 
selves in the Southern States, but it is not conceivable that 
they could ever have been combined into such a diabolical 
scheme of perjury, treason, and rebellion as that which is now 
struggling to destroy the government and life of the nation. 

I have no time to go into an analysis of the social system 
of the South; but the day, I believe, is not distant when the 
general voice of Christian society will admit it to have been 
false to the core; and that its permanent existence as a ruling 
power would have been fatal to the moral interests of this 
nation and of mankind. It will be admitted that the elements 
of a worse and more dangerous oligarchy can hardly be im¬ 
agined. Quite aside from the fate of the enslaved race, the 
condition of the large majority of the white race also is ren¬ 
dered by it hopelessly degraded. What sad revelations the 
progress of the war has given us on this point! How well 
they illustrate the maxim of Lord Bacon respecting the true 
greatness of kingdoms and states: “ Let states that aim at 
greatness, take heed how their nobility and gentlemen do mul¬ 
tiply too fast; for that maketh the common subject grow to be 
a peasant and base swain, driven out of heart, and, in effect, 
but a gentleman’s laborer. Even as you see in coppice woods, 
if you leave straddles too thick, you shall never have clean 
underwood, but shrubs and bushes. So in countries, if the 
gentlemen be too many, the commons will be base” It is un- 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


17 


deniable that slavery has been the main cause of that remark¬ 
able stratum of Southern society—the poor whites —who have 
already afforded their political masters so much food for pow¬ 
der, and who, forming as they do in large sections of the 
South, an immense numerical majority of the population, are 
to be rewarded by and by—those of them who survive—with 
the privilege of not voting at the elections and of taking no 
part in the government of the new Confederacy. I speak of 
the oligarchical despotism of the South — not of the Southern 
people themselves. I know perfectly well that so far as indi¬ 
vidual character is concerned, the South has produced and is 
still able to produce as fine and noble specimens of human 
nature — as brave, as generous, and as Christian men and 
women as the North. But its slaveholding social system 
is essentially at war with the first principles of our democratic 
republic; at war with its liberty and equality, with its popular 
suffrage, with its common schools, with its free thought, free 
speech, and free press, with its constitutional order and justice, 
with its industrial dignity and freedom, with its fair human¬ 
ities, and its ancestral Christian spirit. Such a system cannot 
live and rule on this continent without subverting, sooner or 
later, the institutions of our fathers and changing our whole 
civilisation. It has already developed some of the subtlest vices 
of Oriental caste combined with the political organization, skill, 
energy, and reckless ambition, which belong to the revolution¬ 
ary despotisms of the West. Give to this power national ex¬ 
istence and independence, half a million of bayonets, a great 
fleet of iron-clad ships and floating batteries, railroads leading 
everywhere, two thirds of our sea-coast and the Gulf of Mex¬ 
ico, more than seventy out of our eighty-four principal rivers, 
the larger portion of our present territory, 'with unbounded 
prospects beyond to tempt its cupidity, and what is likely to be 
the result of it all before the beginning of another century ? 
Is anybody so ignorant of history or so simple-minded as to 
believe that such a power as this and such a power as the 
American Union could quietly coexist in the same hemis¬ 
phere ? 

I cannot resist the conviction, then, that in the decree of 


18 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


Providence this rebellion is the death-sentence of slavery, and 
that the American people will see to it that the sentence is 
carried into execution. And this not solely because the insti¬ 
tution is so unjust and cruel to the black man, but still more 
because it is so utterly demoralizing to the white man. If we 
were at liberty to leave out of account the claims of the ne¬ 
gro himself; if we could demonstrate, as so many have tried 
to do, that his welfare is best promoted by the state of bond¬ 
age, even then would the paramount interests of the dominant 
race require the overthrow of slavery as a system abhorrent 
to the whole genius and morale of our Anglo-Saxon type of 
civilisation. But are we at liberty to leave out of account the 
claims of the black man himself? “ I frankly confess to you, 
gentlemen (said the other day a distinguished politician of the 
old national democracy, to a highly intelligent company whom 
he was addressing), I frankly confess to you, that, for myself, I 
take no interest in the negro; but, gentlemen, I am at a loss 
to conceive how any man can review the history of this rebel¬ 
lion without a clear conviction that Almiqhty Providence 
does!” 

Precisely when and how the “ monstrum horrendum ” will 
be finally disposed of I do not pretend to say; but certainly 
the mortal process seems to be going on. There is already a 
most destructive “ friction and abrasion” about the extremities ; 
and in due time, doubtless, the very seat of life will be reached. 
Let us not be impatient; let us not be in too great a hurry. 
There is a right way and a best way of doing whatever ought 
to be done. Because a murderer is sentenced to be hung, 
nobody would be therefore justified in strangling him on the 
spot. The forms of law must be observed. Whether slavery 
is finally abolished in one year or in a score of years, appears 
to me comparatively unimportant, provided its abolishment is 
deliberately initiated and rendered ultimately certain. The 
subject is beset with the greatest practical difficulties, and 
those who agree as to the main principles ought not to quarrel 
about the details of time and manner. The country is under 
a heavy debt of gratitude to the President for the admirable 
spirit which he has shown in dealing with this question. His 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


19 


recent address to the Border State men is one of the most dig¬ 
nified and impressive appeals which ever issued from the lips 
of power. I shall not stop to discuss the President’s plan, or 
any of the other schemes of emancipation which have been 
proposed. "Whatever plan is adopted, it is plain enough that its 
successful execution will require the utmost wisdom, firmness, 
and resources of the nation, aided by the special favor of 
God. In the progress of events a violent and summary pol¬ 
icy may become necessary. We know not what a month or 
a week may bring forth. The American people are in no 
mood to be trifled with ; and the mill of the gods, although it 
always grinds sure, does not always grind slow. Sometimes 
when a great people, inspired of Heaven, put their shoulder 
to the wheel which turns it, its movement becomes quick and 
terrible like an avalanche ; then in a moment, in the twinkling 
of the eye, as it were, the work is done. For one day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years, and sometimes he crowds the 
work of a thousand years into one day. 

I have left myself but little time to touch upon other points 
of vital importance. It has been my aim to show that this 
crisis is full of Providential lessons and results. Events have 
a two-fold office; they are designed at once to form and to re¬ 
veal the nation’s character. They force it to a thorough self- 
knowledge and self-development. They compel it to face its 
past errors, and learn the bitter but salutary truth that 

“We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor ; this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice 
To our own lips.” 

They summon its deepest principles, its intelligence, its 
latent, reserved strength, its moral and physical resources, 
its ancestral spirit,, and its whole manhood into strenuous ac¬ 
tion. This rebellion has taught us as much that is new about 
ourselves and our institutions, as about the geography of our 
country. What mist and clouds of false opinion it has scat¬ 
tered to the four winds! With how much more benignant 
and star-like virtue than ever before, do those divine ideas of 


20 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


freedom, humanity, justice, and religion, in whose radiance 
the infant nation was perpetually bathed, and which have 
been indeed 

“-a master-light of all our seeing,” 

shine down upon us in this dismal midnight of our troubles! 
When before were ever the time-honored traditions of our his¬ 
tory ; the sweet memories of our pilgrim father and mothers; 
the names of the immortal patriots, heroes, and statesmen, 
which till the earlier and the later annals of the Bepublic; 
the good old cause for which they lived and died, the great 
Constitution, the beneficent government, the glorious Union 
which they formed by their wisdom and consecrated by their 
prayers and sacrifices,—when were they ever so precious and 
sacred as now — now that parricidal traitors would despoil us 
of them all ? 

But we have learnt much that is new about other nations as 
well as about ourselves. One of the most startling effects of 
this crisis has been the sudden revelation of foreign senti¬ 
ment in reference both to our Union and to the cause of 
constitutional and popular government, which it represents. 
Those best acquainted with the secret currents of European 
opinion, were still unprepared for what we have witnessed; 
more especially for what we have witnessed in Great Britain. 
To the most of our people the course of England was anticipat¬ 
ed without misgiving. They expected to be almost inundated 
by a stream of hearty Christian sympathy from that old foun¬ 
tain whence their forefathers had drawn the living waters of 
freedom. They were already covenanting with themselves how 
they would one day pay the grateful debt and teach their child¬ 
ren to pay it over and over again after them. All this may 
have been unreasonable, and even foolish; but certainly it 
was most natural. Never was there a deadlier disappointment. 
England appeared to wait until she thought she saw which way 
the scale was going to turn ; and since then her sympathy has 
been like the blast of a wintry east-wind. There have been, 
it is true, noble exceptions. The names of such men as 
John Bright, Mill, Arthur, Hughes, Foster and others, will 


1862.] 


TIIE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


21 


long be lielcl in honor among ns, for they have spoken gen¬ 
erous and truthful words in our behalf, when such words were 
of more value than the precious onyx or the sapphire. A few 
presses, too, have been earnest and faithful advocates of our 
cause; and no doubt there have been many secret good wishes 
and prayers for our success. But the simple fact remains, that 
the general feeling of Great Britain, as expressed in the varied 
organs of her public opinion, and by her public men, has been 
overwhelmingly against us and our cause. How shall we ex¬ 
plain it ? It may be readily explained by assuming that our 
cause is bad, and that we are in the wrong. Then England’s 
course would be highly to her credit. But assuming our cause 
to be what we honestly believe it to be, the cause of order, 
justice, and human freedom, how then shall we account for 
the fact that the freest, most law-abiding and politically-en¬ 
lightened, most anti-slavery, and most Christian people of the 
old world — our own kith and kin too, — have turned their 
backs upon us in this dread hour of our agony, and lavished 
their moral support upon the most flagitious conspiracy and 
rebellion the world ever saw,—a rebellion whose openly-avow¬ 
ed aim is to found a government with perpetual and ever-ex- 
tending slavery as its corner-stone! Ho ordinary motives, no 
ephemeral influences and pretexts, however plausible, can 
explain this phenomenon. It has deeper roots. It is the pro¬ 
duct of causes that lie back of the common consciousness, that 
have their source in the will rather than the understanding. Ho 
man of sense will pretend, of course, that there may not have 
been honest misapprehensions in England respecting our feel¬ 
ing and intentions toward her. Infinite pains had been taken 
by the emissaries of secession to foment such misapprehensions: 
—as, for example, that Mr. Seward was her enemy and was bent 
upon the annexation of Canada, that we wanted to get into a 
war with her, and the like. But did not the course of our Gov¬ 
ernment in the Trent affair afford an unanswerable reply to 
such calumnies? Ho doubt, too, the Morrill Tariff, and still 
more the loss of cotton, have been exceedingly trying to her. 
But these things were no justifiable ground of offence. We 
had a perfect right to frame our own tariff. It was no fault of 


22 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


ours that England’s supplies of slave-grown cotton were sud¬ 
denly cut off. It was the fault of the traitors who precipitat¬ 
ed the country into civil war. If England had not been pre¬ 
disposed to take sides against us, she might still have insisted 
upon our giving up Mason and Slidell; but would she have 
done it in just the way she did ? Could she have so misun¬ 
derstood the principles of our Constitution, the motives of our 
. government, or the spirit of our people in reference to this 
struggle; could she have so misinterpreted the most notorious 
facts, and boldly continued to assert that slavery had nothing 
to do with the real motives and merits of the struggle, if a 
secret bias of the will had not perverted her judgment ? But 
I need hardly speak of a secret bias. Ho fact of contempo¬ 
rary history is better established than the fact that this Re¬ 
public is the object of profound antipathy among the ruling 
classes of Great Britain, and that they would rejoice in its de¬ 
struction. With individual exceptions, of course, they Sre our 
enemies, and not our friends. Our troubles have taught us 
this. In ordinary times nations are apt to play the hypocrite to¬ 
wards each other. Their amity is apt to be the mere offspring 
of fear or self-interest. Their alliances are often unnatural 
and forced. There is, in truth, a deplorable want of real hon¬ 
esty and Christian principle in the whole sphere of interna¬ 
tional polity and relationships. But such a crisis as the pre¬ 
sent compels nations to uncloak their real sentiments and pro¬ 
clivities. It has done so in the case of Great Britain, in a 
way to excite our grief and amazement. As one after an¬ 
other of her most eminent statesmen, the leaders of her re¬ 
nowned aristocracy, her eloquent divines and able writers — 
men whose names were familiar as household words in all .our 
homes — pronounced judgment against us, often in terms of 
unwonted arrogance and contumely; it has seemed almost 
incredible that we were listening to voices from the land of 
Milton and of Hampden—the land consecrated of old to liber¬ 
ty, law, and hatred of slavery. But it was even so. And it 
is a fact which seems to me portend anything but good to 
the cause of peace and humanity. 

Great Britain and America ought to march in the van of 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


23 


Christian civilisation, hand joined to hand. It is a thousand 
pities they should not do so. England could form no alliance 
on earth so natural, so fruitful, so beneficent, or so invinci¬ 
ble as this. It would be a grand alliance with the future, and 
with the course of history. “ The possible destiny”, said Cole¬ 
ridge, thirty years ago, “ the possible destiny of the United 
States of America, as a nation, of a hundred millions of free¬ 
men, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living un¬ 
der the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shaks- 
peare and Milton, is an august conception. Why should 
we not wish to see it realized? America would then be 
England viewed through a solar microscope — Great Britain 
in a state of glorious magnification.” If the spirit which 
breathes in these generous words of one of her greatest and 
wisest sons, had possessed the heart of England’s statesmen, 
she would have seized the precious, irrevocable opportunity, 
and bound this great Republic to her with hooks of steel. 

She has chosen another course. I do not complain of it. 
But I think the causes of her doing so merit our careful study, 
for they are likely to influence both her and us in the future. 
“ In the eyes of an Englishman”, says the profound critic of 
our own Democracy, who knew England well, and loved her 
in spite of her faults, “a cause is just if it be the interest of 
England that it should succeed. A man or a government that 
is useful to England, has every kind of merit, and one that does 
England harm, every sort of fault”. These are severe words, 
and I should not have ventured to utter them in my own 
name; but have they not found a signal illustration in the 
present case ? 

There is, indeed, something prodigious in the mental and 
moral constitution of most Englishmen, when they sit in judg¬ 
ment upon other nations. What a marvellously happy faculty 
they possess of forgetting unpleasant things in their own liis-. 
tory! How often they remind one of what the rat said to the 
mouse, when a cat was introduced into the premises: 

“ Said the other, This cat if she murder a rat , 

Must needs be a very great sinner : 

But to feed upon mice can’t be counted a vice; 

I myself like a mouse for my dinner.” 


24 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


After hearing all the various rebukes, counsels, and curtain- 
lectures addressed to us from the mother-country during the 
past eighteen months, would anybody venture to dream that 
the British Government had ever been anything else but the 
gentle, impartial, and divinely appointed “ guardian of civil¬ 
isation”? Would anybody believe that it ever had made, or 
ever could make, the smallest objection to the “secession” of 
old Ireland, the Ionian Isles, or the ancient nationalities of 
India ? Truly there was never such a huge piece of con¬ 
tradiction ; for, without a question, England is still a great 
and wonderful country, full of glorious institutions, robust 
virtues, prolific talents, unbounded industry, enterprise, pluck, 
and cleverness; above all, of true-hearted and large-hearted 
Christian men and women. Nobody* can deny this. Butin 
her weak points there is no nation more ludicrously infirm, 
however unconscious she herself may be of the fact; while her 
bad points are exceedingly bad. If one wishes to understand 
the dark side of British character in our day, let him read 
over the articles of the London Times on the American strug¬ 
gle, remembering that this is the paper from which English 
noblemen, bishops, scholars, merchants, and politicians derive 
their chief information and by which they are most largely 
influenced in forming their opinions concerning the affairs of 
the world. Where else shall we find a match for this most 
able, but godless sheet, in unblushing mendacity, scoffing, ar¬ 
rogance, and duplicity! Its course toward our afflicted coun¬ 
try has been that of Shimei, who came forth and cast stones 
at King David, when he fled before the rebellion of his un¬ 
natural son, who cursed the king also as a bloody man and 
a man of Belial. It is hard not to say, with the sons of Zeru- 
iah, why should this dead dog curse my lord , the Icing f Why 
should our revered and sorrow-stricken country be reviled and 
mocked at by this uncircumcised Briton ? But I seem to hear 
that country’s injured majesty chiding such thoughts, in the 
words of King David to Abishai and all his servants : “ Be¬ 
hold my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my 
life; how much more now may this Benjaminite do it ? Let 
him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him”. 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


25 


I have spoken of England and her feelings toward ns. On 
the Continent w T e have more friends and are far better under¬ 
stood. Insular narrowness and aristocratic pride have not 
stood in the way of a candid study of our institutions. There 
the great work of De Tocqueville made its mark upon the po¬ 
litical intelligence of the age, and its influence is still felt. 
The remarkable books of our generous and whole-souled ad¬ 
vocate, De Gasparin, strikingly show this. The passion for 
popular freedom and popular rights, yet glows in many noble .... 
breasts. Neither the divisions and reactionary principles in f 
Germany, nor the iron despotism in France, nor the alfeb-- 
sorbing thought of national unity in Italy, have extinguished it. . 
Still the political condition of the Continent is not auspicious . 
for our cause. So far as the governments and ruling classes 
are concerned, they regard us, for the most part, with doubt and 
disfavor. The reaction is everywhere potential. The Sphynx- 
like man, who reigns in the Tuileries, is everywhere held in 
secret terror, and sits as an incubus upon the heart of Eu¬ 
rope. The sympathy with popular, republican, Christian in¬ 
stitutions like ours, is at its minimum; the sympathy with 
ultra-conservative principles and absolutism in Church and 
State is at its maximum. The revolutions of 1848 have borne 
little fruit but this as yet. Let any one who desires light on 
this subject, read with care the recently published memoir 
and letters of De Tocqueville. It is one of the saddest books 
of the day. It gives a most vivid picture of the demoraliza¬ 
tion of political sentiment and character in Europe. Let me 
cite a few passages. Here is one written in 1856 : 

“ I still consider liberty as the first of blessings. I still see that it is 
one of the most fertile sources of manly virtues and great actions. No 
tranqdillity and no material comfort can in my mind make up for its loss. 
And yet I see that most of the men of my time — the most honest among 
them, for I care little about the others — think only of accommodating 
themselves to the new system, and what most of all disturbs and alarms 
me, turn a taste for slavery into a virtue.” 

Again he writes: 

“Is it really true that there ever have been parliamentary assemblages 
in France ? That the nation took a passionate interest in all that was 


26 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


spoken in them ? Were not these men, these constitutions, these forms of 
government, shadows without substance? Did the passions, the hopes, 
the fears, the sympathies and antipathies, which once so strongly moved 
us, really exist in our own time, or are they mere recollections of what we 
have read in history ? In truth, I am tempted to believe it; for what has 
really existed leaves some trace, and I see none of all we imagined that we 
saw and felt.” 

Speaking of the reaction in France, lie says: 

“ With a few exceptions, we have come out of this revolution like labor¬ 
ers who leave the field hanging their heads, worn out by the day’s work, 
thinking of nothing but to get home, get their supper, and get to bed.” 

If Europe does not intervene in our troubles, then, it will be 
from no restraint of principle, but from the conviction that inter¬ 
vention would be likely to cost too much. Nothing will ward 
it off, nothing has warded it off, but a salutary dread of the 
possible consequences. The monitory voice of that little 
41 Yankee cheese-box”, which appeared so unexpectedly off 
Fortress Monroe on that memorable Sunday morning of last 
March, has been far more eloquent in our behalf than any 
despatch of Mr. Seward. We shall be demented if, after the 
lessons of the past year, we rely upon anything else than our 
own strong arm and the favor of Heaven. Peace is our fun¬ 
damental policy; but henceforth we must be one of the first 
military and naval powers of the earth. The systematic and 
persistent attempt, both in England and on the continent, to 
represent the American people as little better than a great 
mob, and the government as terrorized by their clamor, 
means, being interpreted, hostility to our free, democratic 
institutions; and it is all-important for us so to understand it. 
Even the aged Lord Brougham, in his recent lamentable 
tirade, plainly avows this sentiment. He warns against the 
fierce, warlike passions of democracy in contrast with the 
peaceable spirit of monarchy, and does not shrink from a 
virtual comparison of the American people agonizing for na¬ 
tional life and their national government, to the multitude who 
clamored for the crucifixion of our Saviour. The feeling of 
most of the governments and ruling classes of Europe toward 
the people in the democratic sense of that term (a feeling oc- 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


27 


casioned in part, I admit, by errors and excesses of the demo¬ 
cratic spirit) is very much that of the Pharisees of old ; Ex- 
ecrdbilis ista turret, quee non novit legem. 

But it is time that I hasten to a conclusion. I have touched 
upon only a few salient points of my subject. And while, as 
you perceive, I have spoken my mind freely in reference to 
the rebellion and its motives, as also in reference to foreign 
sympathy with it, I have said but little in censure of our own 
faults and errors in the past or the present. This is not be¬ 
cause I think there has been no ground of blame, nothing 
wrong among us. Far enough from it. But it would be dif¬ 
ficult to speak the whole truth without allusions not altogether 
in place on such an occasion as this. It is no hour for bitter 
reflection and recrimination. Few are altogether guiltless. 
Almost all have made mistakes, greater or less. I have small 
respect for the man who busies himself now with nursing old 
hates and prejudices, raking up old quarrels, proclaiming 
his own innocence, or even denouncing old sinners. lie had 
better wait till the war is over,—perhaps he had better wait 
till the day of judgment. That will be a fearful day, no 
doubt, to not a few who have helped on this treason and held 
their heads high in the land ; but will it not be a serious day 
to us all, when our duty to our country shall be the matter of 
inquisition ? Who of us has done for her all he might and 
ought to have done ? Who of us will not need mercy ?. So 
far, too, as the leading conspirators and criminals are con¬ 
cerned, whether north or south of Mason and Dixon’s line, 
they may safely be left to the future. History will take care 
that justice is done them. We have seen but the early dawn 
of American literary genius. We shall have our Thucydides 
and our Tacitus yet. Perhaps we shall have our Dante yet; 
and when he constructs his poetical hell, he will leave ample 
space, and that in the lowest circles, for these unnatural children 
of the Republic; ample space, too, let us hope, for the corrupt 
contractors and politicians and office-hunters who have traded 
in the woes and blood of their country! And on the other 
hand, he will place high in his poetical Paradise, and crown 
with aramanthine wreaths, those who shall have done most 
and made the greatest sacrifices for their country’s salvation. 


28 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


[Oct. 


In the mean while, let the main question be,—Who is on the 
Lord’s side ? Who, forgetting the past, is willing to put his hand 
to the plough, and help put down this rebellion, without fur¬ 
ther delay ? Who is willing to give his days and nights, his 
labor, influence, money, son, brother, and his own life to the 
work until it be accomplished ? It is high time to put these 
questions everywhere and to everybody—and those who hold 
back and shirk them, harping still upon old grievances, de¬ 
serve the malediction pronounced against Meroz; Curse ye 
Meroz , said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the in¬ 
habitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the 
Lord , to the help of the Lord against the mighty. 

Of the history and conduct of the war thus far I have but 
few words to say, and these shall be a plea for confidence. 
Grave mistakes have unquestionably been made. How could 
it have been otherwise ? The President and his advisers are 
fallible men. Congress is far from being an infallible body. 
Our best generals are all imperfect. On the other hand, the 
task to be performed, both civil and military, has been almost 
superhuman, with scarcely a ray of experience to guide the 
government on their dim and perilous way, with treachery on 
every side, and the popular voice itself often clamoring for 
different and sometimes for impossible things. We have 
wanted our President to be at once a Washington and a Jack- 
son, and our generals to be all Napoleons. We have wanted 
to have everything done with consummate wisdom and skill. 
It was a natural feeling in view of the interests involved ; but 
w T as it reasonable ? Certainly, there has been a great deal to 
try and vex the nation’s patience; but it is always so in mo¬ 
mentous exigencies; and does not this very trial of patience 
work experience, and experience hope? It is a thousand 
times pleasanter to praise than to blame ; and though blame 
is often indispensable and most salutary, yet it is so only in 
the degree that it is intelligent and just. On the whole, is 
there another man among all the twenty millions of loyal citi¬ 
zens whom you would prefer to put at the head of the nation 
in place of the honest, sagacious, and just man — the plain 
Western man of the people—whom Providence has put there ? 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


29 


Admitting that Congress has said and done some unwise things, 
has it not also passed some of the most important and fruitful 
measures recorded in the history of our national legislation ? 
Have we not ample reason for thanksgiving that the crisis has 
given us so many officers in both arms of the service who have 
understood their work, and performed it with eminent skill 
and valor; men whose names will be for ever honored in the 
memory of the Republic ? And as to the army and navy 
themselves, what words can do justice to their heroic deeds 
and their still more heroic sufferings and patience ? We used 
to look up to the heights of patriotic zeal and self-devotion, 
where our Revolutionary sires once walked, with awe-struck 
eye, and fancied them inaccesible in our pleasure and money- 
loving age. But these youthful scions of the good old stock 
have trodden those glorious heights, and are treading them to¬ 
day ; so too are myriads of the sons of Erin and of the land 
of Luther along with them. Of more than six thousand sick 
and wounded Hew England’soldiers who have passed through 
Hew York, two only, I was told the other day, had been heard 
to utter complaint and dissatisfaction with the war; the rest 
were eager to recover, that they might return to the fie^d of 
conflict. Such is the spirit of our young warriors for the 
Union; and I believe it is, in truth, the inmost spirit of the 
nation. 

Let us give way, then, to no querulous, doubtful, or gloomy 
temper. Let us not only not despair of the Republic, but cher¬ 
ish unbounded faith in its heaven-appointed destiny. Hope 
is our American and Christian birth-right. We belong to the 
future ; and if the past was not a mockery, that future has in 
store for us unspeakable blessings. But we must prove our¬ 
selves worthy of them before they will be ours. The nation 
has already done a mighty work, military, naval, financial, 
and political; but it is able to do a yet mightier work. We 
have had great successes already; we shall have greater still 
in the future. The recent sharp disappointment at not cele¬ 
brating the Fourth of July in Richmond and all other disap¬ 
pointments will be swallowed up in the ultimate triumph. 
It is indeed a dreadful contest; like that waged in heaven, 


30 THE NATIONAL CRISIS. [Oct. 

when, smitten by the sword of Michael, the great archangel, ' 
Satan 11 first knew pain” ; a contest 

“-such as, to set forth 

Great things by small, if, nature’s concord broke, 

Among the constellations war were sprung, 

Two planets, rushing from aspect malign 

Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky 

Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.” 

Yes, it is war of the direst sort; as such let it be carried on 
until this rebellion also be hurled headlong, 

“ With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition.” 

Let the country throw its whole mind, soul, and strength into 
the contest; but let it do so with the moral dignity, order, and 
temperance w T hich become a great Christian people. Let it 
go forward with impassioned energy and determination, but 
at the same time calm, self-possessed, and revengeless. We 
are fast making history and forming character for coming 
ages; let us keep a righteous and stainless record that shall 
be a heritage of honor to our children’s children. The world 
is looking on, and with but few friendly eyes. God and 
angels, too, we may be sure, are spectators of our conduct. 

The breaking up of the American Union”, writes De Tocque- 
ville, “ will be a solemn moment in the history of the world”. 

“ I cannot desire, as many persons do, its dismemberment. 
Such an event would inflict a great wound on the whole hu¬ 
man race.” I, for one, cannot believe that such a wound 
is to be inflicted. There is only one other calamity that, it 
seems to me, would exceed this—the expulsion from among 
us of the Christian religion. So far as we ourselves are 
concerned, if this rebellion should triumph, that instant the 
value of human existence on this continent would fall as the 
public securities fall when a hurricane of bankruptcy and 
panic sweeps over the land. It would then be as woeful a 
thing to live as it is pleasant now ; and as bitter in dying to 
leave children behind you as it is sweet now ; for every nerve 
and fibre of loyal American life is bound up with the life of 


1862.] 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


31 


the Union. The national government, viewed in the most 
formal way, is yet like the shell of the tortoise, which shelters, 
guards and conserves the whole organism within. What would 
become of the living creature were this protective covering 
crushed and torn off? and what would become of the vital 
organism of American society, with its thousand tender and 
sacred offices, if, no longer sheltered and shielded by the Con¬ 
stitution and the laws, it were exposed to the assaults of those 
fierce, anarchic elements which are now desolating and con¬ 
suming the life of the South ? 

And while the Union is aft in all, the very ark of the 
covenant, to us and our children, it is everything to the race. 
It is freighted with better hopes for freedom and humanity than 
any other nation in existence. If it is wrecked and lost, there 
will be a cry of anguish through the earth. What other na¬ 
tion can take the place or do the work of this ? What other 
nation by its fundamental principles and its entire history 
represents, as this does, the immutable rights and dignity of 
human nature ? What other nation occupies such a matchless 
position on the globe for serving the cause of God and man ? 
If still united, we shall cross the threshold of 1900 a hundred 
millions strong; and if we 4ight this battle successfully, what 
battles for truth and justice and freedom and all good things 
shall we not then be able to fight ? 

The issue is in the hands of God, and it becomes us reve¬ 
rently to await his decree. But we have the strongest reasons 
for awaiting it in hope. Would he have guided the nation 
from the beginning with such a friendly and outstretched arm, 
if he had meant to kill us ? Surely we cannot abandon the 
faith of our fathers, that he is the Master-Builder of this Union 
and has ordained for it an incomparable destiny, so long as 
the moon endureth. 

Yes, I believe it will yet live not only to correct its own 
errors and to learn wisdom by the things which it has suffered, 
but also to teach the world new lessons in liberty, in govern¬ 
ment, in philanthropy, in science and art, in the dignity and 
skill and exhaustless resources of industrial freedom, and in the 
beneficent power of Christian faith. I believe it will yet be- 


32 


THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 


come, like Mount Zion, the joy of the whole earth, realizing, 
as the light of its example becomes more pure and bright, the 
vision of the poet: 

“ I saw the expectant nations stand 
To catch the coming flame in turn; 

I saw, from ready hand to hand, 

The clear, though struggling, glory burn. 

“ And each, as she received the flame, 

Lighted her altar with its ray; 

Then, smiling to the next who came, 

Speeded it on its sparkling way.” 

Let us, then, steer right onward in our dread task, hum¬ 
bly entrusting our cause still to that divine Champion of hu¬ 
manity, who guides the march of history. It is a true Apo¬ 
calyptic contest, full of mysterious seals and vials of tribula¬ 
tion ; but it is in the hands of Him who in righteousness 
doth judge and make war. Let us not doubt that in due time 
lie will bring forth judgment unto victory. “Then”, to con¬ 
clude in the glowing words of Milton, “then amidst the hymns 
and hallelujahs of saints, some one may be heard offering at 
high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate 
Ilis divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land 
throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, 
instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of 
truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of 
her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emu¬ 
lation, to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian 
people at that day, when Thou, the eternal and shortly-ex¬ 
pected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several king¬ 
doms of the 'world, and distributing national honors and re¬ 
wards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end 
to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild 
monarchy through heaven and earth”. 


3 


W 6 0 ' 


1 862 . 


^m^riqan ©Mortal '^cuiqui. 

No. XIV. 

CONTENTS OF THE APRIL NUMBER, 


I. Essays and Reviews. 

Article I. —Modern Philosophy Pantheistic. By Laurens P. Hick ok, D.D., - 199 

II. —Religious Instruction in Colleges. By the Rev. D. R. Goodwin, D.D., 

Provost of the University of Pa.,.228 

III. —Swedenborg’s Theory of the Divine-Human. By Prof. E. A. 

Lawrence, D.D.,.238 

IV. —The Homeric Doctrine of Sin. By Prof. W. S. Tyler, D.D., Amherst, 27t> 
V. —The Perpetual Observance of the Sabbath. By Prof. Egbert C. 

Smyth, Bowdoin College,.296 

VI.—The Origin of Idolatry, -------- 328 

VII. —Passaglia, Guizot, and Dollinger on the Roman Question, - - 352 


II. Theological and Literary Intelligence. 

Coinmodianus in the Spieilegium Solesmense—First printed Bible—Tyndale’s Jonas— 

Traces of Northmen—Simonides’ Fac-Simile of Matthew. Greece : Popular Songs 
by Passow — New Works — Kalopathakes. Germany : Studien und Kritiken — Zwirner 
—Mozart—Frey tag—Theologische Quartalschrift—Ranke on Cromwell—Lasaulx’s 
Works condemned. Holland and Belgium: Jesuit Authors — Van Hengel — 
Scheffer, etc. Scandinavia: New Works. Russia: University — Periodicals, etc. 
France: New Works on Theology—Renan—Vinet—De Gasparin—Revue Chre- 
tienne Annales de Philosophic, etc. Italy : Conti’s Criteria of Philosophy — Basili¬ 
ca of St. Clement—Galileo—Cavour. Spain and Portugal: Spanish Universities 
—Secret Library of the Inquisition. Great Britain : Brit, and Foreign Evang. 

Review—British Quarterly Review—Journal of Sacred Literature—Timologus on 
Mansel—Tyler on Jehovah—H. H. Wilson—New Works. United States of 
America: New Works — Dr. Ruffner — President Felton — Evangelical Review — 
Brownson’s Quarterly,.369 

III. Literary and Critical Notices of Books. 

Theology : Aids to Faith, ed. by Bishop Thomson—Replies to “Essays and Reviews,” 
with Preface by the Bishop of Oxford -Tracts for Priests and People, by various 
Writers—McCosh, the Supernatural in relation to the Natural—Auberlen, Die gott- 
liche Offenbarung—Stevens’s Methodism—J. Few Smith, Presb. Church in Newark. 
Biblical Literature : Isaac Taylor, Spirit of Hebrew Poetry — Ellicott’s Commen¬ 
tary to the Ephesians—Oliver’s Syriac Peshito Psalter—Stuart’s Commentary on 
Ecclesiastes. Practical Religious Literature : Osgood and Farley, Christian 
Worship, Services for the Church, etc.—Scliaff, Deutsches Gesangbuch—Schafif, » 

Katechismus—Bonar, Hymns of Faith and Hope—Bonar, God’s Way of Peace- 
Abbott, Practical Christianity. General Literature: Wedgwood, Dictionary of 
English Etymology—Permanent Documents of the Society for Collegiate Educa¬ 
tion—Dana, Ethical and Physiological Inquiries—Buiwer Lytton, A Strange Story 
— Pilgrims of Fashion. Miscellany : Discourses by Prentiss, H. S. Carpenter, and 
M. M. Smith—President Tappan’s Message —R. L. Breck, The Habeas Corpus Act 
—Mayhew, The Young Benjamin Franklin — John Brown, Health—Five Lay 
Sermons. -.378 

IV. Statistics, and Church News. 

Prussia—Switzerland—Bulgaria—Algeria—A Secluded Mission Station—Asia—Mada¬ 
gascar—Religious Liberty in Egypt—The Samoan Mission—New South Wales—The 
Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa—The Roman Catholic World—Scotland— 
Religious Statistics of Austria—Progress of the Gospel in France, - 387 






^mqriip iheologi^I f euitjui. 

No. XV. 

CONTENTS OF THE JULY NUMBER, 1862. 


I. Essays and Reviews. 

Article I. — Psychology and Skepticism. By Laurens Hickok, D.D., * - - 391 

II. —Comparative Grammar. By Prof. Francis A. March, - - 414 

III. —The Origin of Idolatry; a Criticism of Rawlinson and others, - 429 
IY. —The Temptation of Christ. By Rev. J. Ambrose Wight, - - 472 

V. —British Sympathy with America,. 487 

VI. —The Presbyterian General Assemblies,. 553 


II. Literary and Critical Notices of New Books. 

Biblical Literature: Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels—Lange on Matthew— 

The Family Bible—Sawyer’s Translation of the Bible. Theology : Shedd’s Dis¬ 
courses—Dewey’s Works — Wolf on Baptism — Bayne’s Christ and Christianity — 

Jones, Trinity. History of the Church: Stanley’s Eastern Church — Dorner on 
the Person of Christ — The Princeton Jubilee — Report on Mahrattas—Laurie on 
Syria Mission — Krebs’ Sermon on Missions. Practical Religious Literature : 
Bunting’s Sermons—Alexander on Faith—Guthrie, Way of Life—Power, The “I 
Wills” of Christ—Seiss, Parable of Ten Virgins—Life of Vandeleur—Pocket Tracts 
Bunnett, Louise Juliane, Electress Palatine — Christ’s Work of Reform—Sermons 
on the Christian Sabbath. Politics and History: Mill’s Representative Govern¬ 
ment — Botta’s Discourse on Cavour — Enormity of the Slave-Trade — Rice, The 
Pulpit, etc. — Brownlow, Sketches of Secession — Crummel, Future of Africa — 

Agenor de Gasparin, L’Am6rique devant l’Europe — Principes et Int^rets. Books 
of Travel: Burton, City of the Saints — Trollope’s North America — Harper’s 
Hand-Book. General Literature— Muller, Lectures on Language—Religio Med¬ 
ici—De Quincey—De Tocqueville, etc.- -.572 


N.B.—Other notices of Books, and all the Theological and Literary Intelligence , and News 
of the Churches prepared for this number, are necessarily deferred. 







































































































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